With the Battlefield 4 campaign finished I can dampen my criticism somewhat. They’re not trying to tell the same kind of story as a Call of Duty game. No world-spanning global crisis brink of nuclear annihilation run run run disaster time plot.

Here’s what happens in Battlefield 4:

You rescue some Chinese guy named Jun Jie from a high rise in China

The nebulous “Chan’s forces” release an EMP that disables all of… whatever city you were in

From the USS Valkyrie, you see the aircraft carrier USS Titan has been mostly destroyed and go to investigate

You’re heading towards an airfield during a typhoon for some reason and are taken prisoner

Escape from the prison and through the icy mountains to a town

Infiltrate a dam and blow it up

Return to the USS Valkyrie, Jun Jie causes the Chinese troops to surrender or something

Use a speedboat full of C4 explosives to destroy Chan’s warship

That’s it. Jun Jie is apparently a magical leader and having him reveal himself solves whatever problem Chan’s forces had with us.

Of course, we never see this Chan guy and understand his motivation. Irish and Hannah have some sort of “if things were different” moment that fails to wrap up their non-existent character development. And then, just for me, you get to choose whether to send Irish or Hannah on the suicide mission to blow up Chan’s warship with that mountain of C4. I sent Irish. Then I reloaded the level and sent Hannah. If Pac were an option I would have sent him next.

So it’s not like Battlefield 4 shot for the moon and didn’t get out of the atmosphere. It was more like they tried to hit the broad side of a barn and shot themselves in the foot.